Reparation
by ferriswheelfics
Summary: Fourtris Modern AU Collection of One-Shots: Five years after Tris and Tobias elope, they realize that their marriage is in need of repairs.
1. Reparation

**Reparation: **

**A Fourtris Modern AU in which their marriage is need of repair**

"Do we still…do we…?" she begins to ask but can't bring herself to finish in fear of the answer.

"Do we still what?" he snaps, losing his patience with every second. He has a class to prepare to teach, and she shows up in his classroom unannounced, tripping over her words. He is not pleased with the situation.

"Tris, I've got a class in ten minutes," he reiterates.

"You can't talk to me for ten minutes? Come on, Tobias, this is important."

"So is this!" he exclaims. "You can't just interrupt me at my job! You keep doing this, distracting me, and I'll get fired!"

"You say it like I'm here every day! I barely do this. I'm sorry for coming to your work, but we need to talk about this," she insists, stepping closer to him, her eyes softening. She doesn't want to be angry right now. Tobias is frustrated enough for the two of them.

"Well, then say what you have to say," he condescendingly requests. "Say what's so important that you'd cancel your shift at the diner and drop the kids off at Christina's doorstep!"

He's implicating she's irresponsible, and although it bothers her, and although it takes everything she has not to let her annoyance through, she chooses not to address it. So she swallows thickly and steadies her voice. She doesn't want Tobias to hear it waver.

"Do we still love each other?" she finally asks.

Now it's Tobias who can't quite articulate his thoughts. He wants to scold her for the ridiculousness of the question, for the inappropriate setting to ask it, for the following discussion that they do not have time for. He wants to say anything but his answer to the question.

"We love each other," he whispers unconvincingly.

It's not enough to appease Tris. "Even if that was true," Tris says. "I don't think we're in love anymore." Her own face falls as she chokes out. "Maybe we were never in love at all."

Tobias's eyes widen and his blood runs cold as soon as the words leave her mouth.

"I mean, we were very young when we were married," Tris offers as a small explanation for their current problems.

"You were," he corrects. "I wasn't."

"And we got married for the wrong reasons." He starts to protest, but she continues. "We did! We got married right before we found out I was pregnant, and we were tired of my family and what they had to say about our relationship. We got married to prove a point, and that's not exactly the proper foundation for a marriage."

"Zeke and Shauna were in the same situation not one year ago, and they're fine now!" he reasons.

"Shauna wasn't a senior in high school!" she shouts, her voice so raw that he has to take a step back to process her emotions.

"Besides," Tris adds, "That's Zeke and Shauna. We're Tris and Tobias. We got married a week after I turned eighteen, and you were already twenty-five. And now here we are, five years later, three kids later. Three kids, Tobias! In five years! And not one of them was planned!"

"Just can't keep you off of me," he jokes.

"God, can you talk to me about this? Are you capable of seriousness, Mr. Professor? Can you hear what I'm saying right now? Are you listening?" she demands.

"Yeah, I'm listening!"

"Then answer the question. Do we still love each other?"

"That's an unfair question," he says mildly.

"How is that an unfair question?"

"Well, if I say we don't love each other, nothing changes. Not yet, anyways. There's nothing we can do about it. We're not in a position to separate until we cool off, and we don't have the finances to divorce."

"You want to divorce?" she asks carefully. Neither one of them had ever mentioned divorce before. In fact, his casual implementation of the word in their conversation unsettles Tris.

"Do you?" he challenges. "Why are you here, bringing this up if you don't want some kind of break between us, Tris? What's your goal here?"

She wipes her eyes. "I just want to find out if our marriage is worth fixing because it definitely needs to be fixed right now. This isn't working. We're so distant and withdrawn, and there's nothing between us anymore. And if we don't love each other, then we can't move forward."

"And if we do love each other?"

"Then we can fix us."

"Well, even if I say we love each other, it's pointless because you wouldn't be here if you were sure we loved each other," he reminds her.

"That's not true. I honestly don't know. I'm here because I don't feel like we love each other, and I want to know if it's because we need to reconnect, or if it's because we really don't love each other. So which one is it?"

He stares blankly at her while he hesitates. His silence is too much for Tris, and as his first few students begin to trickle in, she can't stand to be in his company any longer. Her husband's silence is an answer in itself. She turns her back to him and walks away.

"Tris!" he calls after her.

"Whatever, Tobias! Forget I asked. I'll see if I can get that shift back at the diner since I need to start saving up for our impending divorce."

"Tris!" he shouts again, earning odd looks from his students.

"Just remember that Christina has night school, so you have to pick the boys up from her place before six. Text me if you don't know what to do with them afterwards."

She's gone before he has a chance to reply.

* * *

Tobias buys a pizza for dinner, a treat for their oldest son, Logan, because of his perfect reading score in language arts. No doubt Nathan enjoys the meal, too, but the ten-month-old Isaiah is too young to participate.

Honestly, Tobias purchases the meal because he is too distracted to cook anything. He can't focus with Tris's words cutting into him like daggers every time he relives the afternoon. A part of him is quick to brush off her comments – the same part that swears the two of them are content. But the other part of him, the honest one, knows that's not true.

But as he sits with his sons at their little kitchen table, as he sees how excited Logan is to recount his day in kindergarten, as he watches Nathan smear pizza sauce across his face, as Isaiah laughs for the entirety of the meal, he knows without a doubt that he wants to experience this elation with Tris, too. And she wouldn't have come to see him in his classroom, struggling to breathe through her tears, if she didn't want the same thing. At least, he hopes so.

* * *

She gets home at nine, after all the boys are tucked into bed. She doesn't immediately spot any major messes, so she figures Tobias must have successfully wrangled the boys. She kicks her shoes off and hangs her coat by the door. She tries to be quiet, in case Tobias wants to continue their previous discussion, but she obviously wasn't quiet enough since she can hear his heavy footsteps begin their trek down the stairs. She sighs and throws her purse onto the kitchen table. It clatters with the two pizza boxes.

"Saved you some pizza," he says softly, like he's afraid to startle her. "Figured you didn't get much of a meal at the diner."

"Thanks," she replies tightly, opening up the refrigerator.

"Why don't you heat it up on a plate and come upstairs, up to our room?" he suggests.

She wants to chastise him. She originally thinks that he's suggesting for the two of them to have sex to release their stress, as they have done in the past, but she's surprised when his face says otherwise. She nods in response, appreciating that he is giving her an olive branch, so to speak. If anything, he is making an effort, and that in itself is almost enough to make her forget about the pizza.

"Okay. I'll meet you upstairs," she agrees with a hint of a smile – one that he returns.

He leaves the door to their bedroom open for her, inviting her in, but she closes it behind her, sealing them off from everything else. She sees him sitting on their bed, every photo album they own sprawled out in front of him.

"What's all this?" she asks curiously.

Tobias pats the bed beside him, and she sits in the space, bringing her knees to her chest and propping her back against their headboard.

"I'm reminiscing," he tells her.

She blows on her slice of pizza before taking a bite. "I'm not sure if reminiscing is going to help us," she cautions. "I'm not the same person anymore."

"Of course you're not," he says. "Neither am I, and that' s okay. That's supposed to happen. We can't stay the same, even if we tried, but the problem is that we don't know the other's new self. We haven't been around each other enough to see these changes, and that's part of the fun of being married. So you and I need to start at the very beginning, and work our way forward. We have to remember where we started, right, to help us determine where we go?"

Her throat is tight as she nods.

"I know a lot of the albums we have of the boys are on our computer, but we're going way back," he says as he slips one of the photographs from its covers, smiling at it before handing it to her.

"Oh, my God," she says. The picture is of the two of them at a café by the beach. It was taken the summer they met. "That's the café that Zeke and Christina ditched us for, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, they did do that when we met," he says. "You know, I never would have gone over there to talk to you unless Zeke wanted to flirt with Christina."

"The funny thing is that we got together, and they didn't."

He smiles fondly. "I honestly thought that you were older than seventeen."

"You did not!" she insists. "I looked younger than seventeen! The only reason I don't look seventeen anymore is because I've had three kids."

"I thought you were nineteen at least."

She lightheartedly hits him with a pillow. "Liar," she says. "But I was completely smitten with you. I'd check my phone every couple minutes for a new message, or a missed call, or something. You didn't call me for a week."

"I lost your number," he admits.

"What?"

"Zeke accidentally threw away the piece of paper it was written on, and I was so mad at him because I really wanted to take you out for dinner or a movie or something. So I made Zeke call Christina to get your number, which was very entertaining to witness, since they had already been on that catastrophic date with each other."

She laughs. "I never knew that!"

"Christina didn't tell you?"

"No, I can't believe she didn't. She usually has trouble keeping those kinds of things to herself."

He hums absently as his mind absorbs the next picture. "This is my favorite one from when we were dating."

Instead of taking the picture from him, Tris scoots closer to him, leaning over his shoulder to get a look at the photograph. It is a picture of the two of them sitting under a tree at his university, the university he teaches at now. In the picture, Tobias has his arm slung across her shoulders, and they both are smiling brightly.

"I think Zeke took that one," he says just to say something. Tris has been staring at it silently too long for his comfort.

"You proposed to me under that tree," she remembers.

"Yeah, I did, but it was a pretty lame proposal. It wasn't even planned. I didn't have a ring or anything."

"I liked it."

"Well, it was the day before you turned eighteen. You were pretty young. You didn't really have any expectations. Sometimes I feel like I took advantage of that."

"You were a perfect gentleman," she assures him. "You wouldn't even sleep with me until I turned eighteen."

"And then we eloped a week later, once we were sure we were sexually compatible."

She throws her head back in laughter, and he does the same. It feels so good to laugh.

"I'm pretty sure we conceived Logan the first night we were together."

"I think you're right."

She looks down at the photograph again. "We should blow this up and get it framed, hang it in the living room. It's a good picture. We don't really have any pictures of the two of us around the house, just the boys."

"Well, I just figured out our six-year anniversary gift."

"And when is our anniversary, Tobias?"

"April 28th," he says without hesitation.

She smiles. "That's something I always appreciated about you – you're really good at remembering dates."

"Just the important ones," he says. "And even if I didn't, it's written on the back of this picture here."

"Aw, our courthouse wedding photo. Christina was my maid of honor, and Zeke was your best man, and they did not get along at our mini reception."

"Our mini reception? Do you mean the lemonade and sandwiches at Zeke's apartment?" he asks.

"Hey, that was a nice reception! Very intimate!"

"Whatever you say, Tris."

He picks up another picture from shortly after the two of them were married. "Here you are right after getting your first tattoo," he shows her. "The ravens."

She scrambles for the picture with one hand while placing her other hand across the ravens decorating her collarbone – three birds to represent the members of her immediate family.

"That was something I really loved about you, still do," he says honestly.

"What, the tattoo?"

"No, the meaning behind the tattoo. It was for your family, and you got it after they disowned you for running off and eloping. You said that the relationships you had with them were strained because of what happened, but you always wanted to keep them with you."

She nods. "And I never told them about it," she confesses. "I never told them about how much the wedge between us hurt, and that's part of the reason why I came to your class today. It's because I don't want there to be a wedge between us. I feel us growing further and further apart, and I don't want it to get to the point where we separate, and you're nothing more than a mark on my skin."

"That won't happen," he promises.

"When you mentioned divorce earlier, my heart stopped," she says. "And I realized that I don't want us to run away from this and make excuses for our behavior. I want us to deal with this and solve it, and I want us to raise our family together. I want us to be happy with each other. I want us to look forward to seeing each other. We didn't get much time together before we had Logan, and even beforehand, we didn't date for very long. There was never a lot of time to focus on the two of us, and that's really important. We have to make time for that now."

He nods and places his arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him, hugging her close. She lays her head against his chest, her body a dead weight, not that he minds. They're not exactly the most emotionally-open people, and this day has really taken its toll on them mentally.

"You're absolutely right," he says, his voice a whisper. "And I'm sorry I hesitated earlier today when you asked me if we still loved each other. I hesitated because I didn't know how to say what I had to say. But I do love you, Tris. I love you very much."

She takes a deep breath against his chest before meeting his eyes with hers. "I love you, too."

And as they fell asleep together, arms around each other, beloved pictures on their nightstands, they knew that any hole in their marriage was well on its way to reparation.

* * *

**Thank you so much for reading! This is not the first fanfiction I've ever written, but this is my first for the Divergent fandom! I'll probably be writing a lot more of them soon!**


	2. Grading Papers

**So, I've had a few requests to extend my original one-shot Reparation to show that Tris and Tobias really are on the right track. I mulled over the idea, and because I had ideas for new one-shots that can fit into the Reparation world, I've decided to turn this story into a collection. I hope you enjoy! Also, I now have a tumblr account under the same name, so if any of you have any prompt ideas, I'd love to take on a new challenge. Thank you!**

* * *

It bothers her that he still comes home late. His last class finishes at 3:30, but he doesn't walk in through the door until around 6:00 on average, his only excuse that he got caught up grading papers.

By the time Tobias comes home, dinner is already on the table, their oldest son has finished his homework, and Tris is usually getting ready for her shift at the diner.

"Leftovers in the fridge," Tris says while tying her hair up into a high ponytail.

"Thanks."

They stand awkwardly in the kitchen for a minute, facing one another, in a stand-off that they don't even know they're in. Tobias is defensive because he knows Tris is upset about something, but Tris can't exactly articulate what she's feeling, and before they know it, it's time for Tris to go to work for the night. They mutter goodbyes before Tobias presses a kiss to Tris's lips, likely the only kiss she'll receive from him tonight.

And sure enough, when she gets home a little before midnight, the house is quiet; her husband and her sons are fast asleep. She's careful not to disturb them as she dresses for bed and slips in beside Tobias, wanting to reach out to him, but careful not to wake him. He's always been a light sleeper.

"You know, you could always grade papers at home since it takes so long," she suggests one night after clearing the dishes off the table and handing them to Tobias to wash.

"I wouldn't get any work done around here," he protests. "I'd be too distracted by you and the boys. It's best to get the bulk of my work out of the way at the university."

She shrugs, pondering for a way to safely approach the subject. "Still, grading the papers at home would allow you to spend more time here."

His muscles tense when she says this, and he slowly moves his hand to turn off the faucet before he wipes both hands on a dishrag and crosses his arms in front of his chest, radiating irritation as he faces her.

"Are you suggesting that I don't spend enough time with the boys?" he demands. "Because I spend plenty of time with them."

"That's not what I'm saying," Tris insists, but it's too late. Tobias's insecurities are already festering inside of him.

"I'm very involved. Logan even told me that I'm more involved than a lot of his friend's dads. I see the boys every morning, and I'm here for them every night when you go to work. I spend time with our boys!"

"That's not what I meant!" Tris shouts, her frustration increasing exponentially with his misinterpretation of her statement. "I know you spend time with the boys! You're twisting my words around!"

She stops shouting when she notices Logan poke his head into the kitchen to see why his mother is yelling, and Tris is quick to control her tone. She's still young, still as hotheaded as she was when Tobias first met her, but she doesn't ever lose her temper with their kids. Really, it only seems like she loses her temper with her husband.

"Then what did you mean?"

"You see the boys a good amount, and that's great and all – after all, you're their father –, but _we _don't really get to see each other, Tobias."

His face, although puzzled, softens at her admission, and he waits for her to continue.

"Sure, we see each other in the mornings, but you're getting ready for work, and I'm busy trying to get breakfast made and getting Logan up for school, and by the time you get home in the evening, it's my turn to get ready for work, and you're asleep by the time I get home."

She continues, "Spending time with the boys isn't our problem. It's that we don't spend any time with each other. I just thought that if you graded your papers at home every day instead of staying at the university, then that would give you and I more time together."

He sighs. "I get what you're saying, Tris, but I don't really see how that would help us. I don't think that, if I graded papers here instead of in my classroom, then we would have more quality time together. I'd be working the whole time. That doesn't help us."

"You'd be here, at least," she whispers, feeling small now that she's confessed a point of vulnerability. "We could have dinner together every night, and we'd have a little while to spend with the boys _together_, you know, since they spend time with us individually."

It hurts him that she's almost embarrassed with the subject. It hurts him that she's close to abandoning the topic; he can hear it in her voice – any second now she'll sigh and tell him to forget about it, even though it's obviously important to her. In a second, she'll bottle it up to keep inside, along with other unfinished conversations that have collected over their five years together.

"We can give it a trial run," Tobias says. "See if it works out well before we change the routine altogether."

She smiles at him, expressing her gratitude in a single gesture. She kisses him before he returns to washing the dishes and she resumes her search for her freshly washed uniform.

* * *

The first day's difficult, more difficult than Tris expected, and every bit as difficult as Tobias anticipated. He is able to greet Tris without the underlying pressures of a time restraint, which is nice for both of them, but it's only a few minutes before his attention is torn away from Tris by his sons' demanding requests.

Logan is just now getting home from school, so he's very excited to recount his day in kindergarten to Tobias on first sight. Tris gently attempts to steer Logan away from his father, reminding him that _Daddy has work to do_ and _Baby, it's time for you to do your homework_.

Their three-year-old, Nathan, exclaims excitedly, "Daddy's home! Daddy's home! Mommy, Daddy's home!"

"Yes, Daddy's home," Tris says, balancing the toddler on one hip and their youngest son, Isaiah, on the other. "But Daddy has work to do, so let's give Daddy some peace and quiet before dinner." Tris bends down to give Tobias a kiss and allow the two boys to do the same.

Logan bounces back in a minute later, undeterred since his mother is preoccupied with his brothers. "Why do you still have to do work when you're at home?" he asks.

"It's homework," his father answers. "Like you have. Shouldn't you being doing that now?"

"I finished it. Can you look over it for me to see if I got the answers right?"

"I'd love to, but I'm still doing my homework. Can you have your mom look over it?"

"She's busy making Isaiah take a nap." Logan stares at his father, his eyes as expressive as his mother's, even though the color mirrors Tobias's.

Tobias sighs in defeat. It's always been hard for him to deny any of his sons. "Sure, Logan. I can look over it."

* * *

Tris gets home from the diner at the same time she usually does, and as usual, the boys are fast asleep. However, the lit lamp in her bedroom signifies that Tobias is not yet asleep, which is rare during the week.

He sits up in their bed, a stack of papers in front of him, his computer beside him, and a stack of papers in his hand. He looks up when she walks in, too tired to manage a small smile.

"I didn't think you'd be up by now," she says.

"Don't want to be, but I had to finish grading these papers somehow."

She braces herself for an argument, for Tobias to blame her for lost sleep, for Tobias to tell her that this was a pointless idea in the first place. "So I guess the trial run didn't work out?"

He doesn't give her a straight answer. "I'm getting my work done, aren't I? I was here when Logan came home from school. I was here to help out with dinner. We spoke more to each other than we've been able to in a while, and I'm up now that you're home, still able to get my work done. I don't think that's a failure, Tris. I think that's productive."

"Even if you're grading papers into the morning hours?"

"Even if I'm grading papers into the morning hours," he affirms.

"It's still a little less than ideal," she reminds him. "You're going to be so tired tomorrow."

"Yeah," he agrees, standing up to kiss her goodnight. "But we'll make it work."


	3. Corporal Punishment

He can sense the chaos consuming his house the moment he turns his car off. He thinks about restarting the car, pulling out of the driveway, and driving around the block a few times until things calm down, but he knows it would be wrong to leave Tris to deal with everything by herself.

So he grabs his briefcase from the backseat and cautiously approaches the front door. When he opens it, he's met with the cries of three sons and the anger of his wife. He can feel a headache coming on almost instantly.

"Nathan!" Tris exclaims. "Nathan, stop this!" It's coming from upstairs, and he takes his time walking up. He sets his briefcase down on the kitchen table before weaving through the hallway and living room, Isaiah screaming at the noise, likely disturbed from his nap, and Logan weeping in tandem with his brother upstairs – he's always been their most empathetic child.

Tobias picks Isaiah up from his playpen, rubbing his back and adopting a soothing voice, talking his son down from his tears.

"What happened, Logan?" he asks carefully.

"Nathan was throwing things at me and Isaiah, so Mommy spanked him."

Tobias has to contain his rage in front of the boys, but his veins boil with white hot anger at the one statement from Logan. "Mommy did _what_?"

"Mommy spanked Nathan."

Now that Isaiah's calmed down for the most part, Tobias sets him back down in the pen. "Keep an eye on your brother for me, Logan," he says, walking briskly up the stairs until he reaches the bedroom Logan and Nathan share.

Nathan's still crying at the top of his lungs, sitting on his knees in one of the corners, flailing his arms. At three years old, the boy's prone to outbursts, the transition from toddler to child proving to be more difficult for him than it was for their first son.

Tris is standing in front of him, all patience shot. She turns around when she hears Tobias walk in, and for a second, she looks relieved. She's immediately grateful that her husband's home. As much as she hates to admit it, the boys have always been better behaved for him, likely because of a deep-seated fear of disappointing their father.

But Tris doesn't know that Tobias isn't here to help her out.

"What were you thinking?" he demands.

"Excuse me?"

"We don't spank the kids," he says, his voice so stern and adamant that she's taken aback by it.

She rolls her eyes and aims her anger at him instead of Nathan. "Look, you can't just come in here when you don't know anything about the situation…"

"We don't spank the kids!"

"Do you think I wanted to?" she exclaims. "I tried everything else! He wouldn't listen!"

"You probably didn't give him much time before you hit him anyways; your patience runs thin."

"_My _patience runs thin?" she shouts. "Tobias, can you just go leave again? Please?"

"Why?"

"I don't want to deal with you right now, okay! There wasn't anything else I could do. I couldn't just let him keep throwing things at the boys. That's not the kind of behavior you can ignore. It has to be corrected."

"So you taught him to hit instead?"

"There was nothing else I could do. He's still having a little tantrum about it."

_Little_ is not the word Tobias would use to describe the state their son is in. "Maybe it's because he's traumatized from what his mother just did to him."

"Don't try to make this more than it is. I barely spanked him. It was just enough to intimidate him, not hurt him."

"Then why's he crying like that?"

"Because he _is _intimidated!" Nathan cries louder, understanding that his father is on his side instead of his mother's. "Can you go away, Tobias? You're making it worse!"

"No, I think you're the one that needs to take a break. You should leave. Go calm down or something."

"What would you have done?" she exclaims. "He wouldn't stop!"

"He's three years old, Tris! All you have to do is pick him up and take him from the room, put him in time out or something! You never have to resort to hitting them!"

She scoffs. "And when that doesn't work?" she questions. "Look, I understand that you're really sensitive to this because of your own experiences, but I swear I barely touched him, and right now you're only aggravating everything. You have no right to imply that I'm being a bad parent. I think you're the one that needs to calm down."

Tris regrets the words as soon as they're out of her mouth. When she and Tobias are as worked up as they are right now, they tend not to think about what they're saying, and the affect her words have on him is instantaneous.

Tobias shakes his head in disbelief and stoops down to reach for Nathan, who readily accepts his father's arms. He eagerly throws his arms around Tobias's neck and brushes the top of his head against his cheek.

Tobias is thankful he has his son to distract him from what Tris has just said. He can't believe she thinks _he's_ the one overreacting.

Tris lets Tobias take Nathan downstairs and decides it's probably best to stay upstairs to give the whole family some time to cool down.

Eventually, none of the children are crying, and she hears Tobias playing a game of some sort with Logan. She figures enough time has passed, and she needs to make some dinner before she leaves for work. Ideally, she'd like to resolve this with Tobias before she leaves for work, but he's likely still upset.

He has every right to be, she thinks.

Tobias doesn't acknowledge her when she walks down the stairs, but Logan does. The two of them are sitting on the floor of the living room, playing Go Fish, Nathan asleep on the couch and Isaiah asleep in his play pen.

"Mommy, do you want to play next round?" Logan asks.

"No, sweetie, I'm going to make some dinner."

"Can I help?" her son offers. Lately, he's been eager to help out his mother in the kitchen.

"Of course you can."

"Okay. Once I finish the game."

She winks at him. "Okay."

She doesn't expect Tobias to say anything at all, but he does. "Is your uniform all ready to go?"

"Um, I need to iron it after I make dinner."

"I can iron it for you," he says.

"Are you sure? I mean, I can do it. I just need to make dinner first. You really don't have to, Tobias. I know you're tired."

"I know you are, too."

"Well, thank you. I really appreciate it."

He nods and retrieves her uniform from the laundry room. It's a tight fit since he has to iron her uniform in the kitchen while she and Logan cook. There isn't any space in the laundry room for anything other than the washing machine and dryer.

Logan has to go to the bathroom at one point, and he leaves his parents alone, oblivious to the tension between them even though he most certainly heard the yelling.

Tobias sighs at one point. Tris watches him from the counter, and she thinks he must have gone over one of the creases in her sleeve at least a hundred times by now.

"I didn't mean it," she whispers carefully.

"Didn't mean what?"

"What I said, about you being overly sensitive. That was really inconsiderate on my part, and I can't imagine what it must have been like for you walking into that."

He nods, not really lingering on her apology, even though he knows how important it is.

"I thought we agreed that we wouldn't spank the children," he says instead.

"What?"

"When Logan was going through this stage, I thought you and I made it clear to each other that we wouldn't ever hit the kids. All that does is teach them how to hit. We don't want that."

"Well, Nathan seems to have throwing things down just fine, and we never taught him that," she deadpans.

"Tris, I'm serious. That's not the example I want to set."

She holds her hands up in surrender. "You're right, and I need to respect that. And maybe spanking was a little quick. I could have just taken him out of the room and explained why he shouldn't throw things."

"And you were right, too, Tris. That behavior isn't acceptable. Nathan had to be punished, but I think we should have gone with time out and taking away his toys for the rest of the day."

"And no TV," Tris adds.

"And no TV," he repeats.

"And I'm sorry for blowing up at you," he mutters. "I know you didn't want to hit him."

"Thank you."

"So I think Nathan's been punished enough, but we still have to talk to him about this when he wakes up."

"Yeah."

"And it's good that _we_ talked about this." He gestures between the two of them.

"It is."

"So do we have an agreement? No more spanking the kids."

"I think that's a good idea," she says, to which he smirks. "What?"

"Nothing. It's just this is a big deal for us. We talked out the problem like adults."

"After blowing up at each other," Tris reminds him.

He shrugs, as if their earlier argument is not that big of a deal to him. "There's always room for improvement."

* * *

**Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! This is the story that I would really love some prompts for, so let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see unfold between the two of them! **


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